Ten Songs Your Church Could Be Singing (But Probably Isn’t…Yet)

What is on your playlist right now? If I could pick all the music that graced the glorious glow of the church projector, these would be the first songs on my list. Anything I missed?

Dawn to Dusk (All Sons and Daughters) – The lyric -“Tomorrow’s freedom is today’s surrender, we come before You, lay our burdens down” – in this song has been rolling around in my mind for weeks. Every song on this album is good, no exception. This might be the most congregational. Charts here (All the charts for this album are on their site).

Beautiful Things (Gungor) – Can be paired with Crags and Clay (Gungor) for a great medley- works lyrically and musically. These songs both lend themselves to really creative instruments (strings, bells, other very acoustic stuff).

Movements (Rend Collective Experiment) – This one is a few years old already but it is a great one. I am amazed at how Gungor takes a theme that most artists would give a sombre tone (the “when things are hard, we’ll keep trusting God” idea) to and make it fun and so fresh. Rend Collective charts are on their site (for their first album at least, the other ones should be there soon).

Never Once (Matt Redman)- Good song for recognizing the seasons of the church and of people…this song acknowledges the pain that we walk through that the promises God makes to be right there in the midst of trouble until we can look back at how far he has carried us. This one gets the tail end of my vote because we’ve done it a few times now, but I think there are some churches that would really get into it.

Build Your Kingdom Here (Rend Collective) – Fun and rhythmic, with endless possibilities for adding weird instruments. Bonus points for adding a whole bunch of brass instruments to your team to lead this one.

All The Poor and Powerless (All Sons and Daughters) – The bridge on this one is pretty anthemic (“Shout it, go on and scream it from the mountains”) and the way these guys write and sing together is something really new and I can’t wait to see where they go. This is a keeper.

Restless (Audrey Assad) – Probably not congregational, but a great offertory song. This one is a bit of a cheat but I can’t make a list of great music without Audrey Assad.

Come And Listen (David Crowder Band) – Great call to worship. More song info (keys, origin) here. Song is short and simple, a bit like Come On My Soul (Rend Collective) which is another call to worship. Had to sneak that one in there.

Awake My Soul (Mumford and Sons) – “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. Awake my soul, for you were made to meet your Maker.” Not a “worship” band, but they draw you into worship again and again…best done with a banjo, but anyone who can handle an Appalachian feel can probably handle this on guitar too. Some of the other songs on this album have words you’d prefer your kids not to repeat. Be warned.

The Earth Is Yours (Gungor) – I will never forget the Gungor concert in Oakville last year when the whole room was singing this- such a swell of praise and deep adoration of the magnificence of the Creator. Awesome.

In addition, all these bands have dozens of other great songs and are worth checking out on iTunes. I would have included Josh Garrels too (all his songs are free on his site), but I couldn’t find anything that was congregational enough to make the cut.